Virgin Galactic seems criminal at base level

Edwards Finance > Phones

Q. A while back, Virgin Galactic travel agents were on KGO radio promoting their space tours. The short ride into space reservation was selling for $200,000. It just seems to me, at first glance, that the fuel spent on this industry is purely criminal. How are we, as individual habitants of this earth, expected to save fuel for future generations by being green when private companies such as Virgin Galactic and government agencies such as NASA are able to burn through fuel as fast as they can without conscience?

A. "It hasn't affected Virgin Galactic as a business at all," Whitehorn said. "It hasn't put a stop to anything." The Mojave accident invoked memories of NASA's Apollo 1 tragedy 40 years ago in which three astronauts were killed in a flash fire during a routine launch pad test. The accident forced NASA to temporarily halt its space race with the Soviet Union and make design changes that led to the successful moon landings. In Scaled's case, three technicians died and three others were critically injured while performing a routine cold-flow test of nitrous oxide that did not involve a rocket firing. The company, which has done the test numerous times before without a problem, uses the chemical as an oxidizer in its spaceship's hybrid rocket motor. California occupational safety regulators are investigating the July 26 explosion and have six months to complete a report. The first fatalities of the new space race stunned the commercial space community, which until now has spoken about risks in abstract terms. Exactly how the accident will affect other companies building their own spaceships is unclear since most are working on different propulsion technologies. However, the Personal Spaceflight Federation, made up of more than a dozen private space companies, pledged to plow ahead despite the tragedy. Before the accident, hardly anything was known about Scaled's progress on its suborbital spaceship program. Afterward, Rutan acknowledged for the first time the company was testing a propellent system for SpaceShipTwo, the successor to SpaceShipOne. Many details about the program are still unknown, including how far along Scaled is. Rutan also opened up a bit about his relationship with Virgin, calling it "clumsy" as he explained Scaled's silence. "This whole program for Richard Branson's company is a program that's clumsy for us, because it's announced but not unveiled," Rutan said on July 26. "So we have for a year and a half here been not answering any questions at all about the program."

Ask Edwards a Finance Question

Other Questions:

cell phones and driving ?

My view is one of the business professional using the phone for conducting business. I feel this falls under the broader umbrella of a cell phone etiquette issue, but that's a topic for another day. But lets just say cell phone etiquette nee...

Can anyone recommend a good value site for business quality phones, coarded as might be used on a PBX. It is really for residential use but the ones in Argos aren't quite what i'm looking for and all the sites I have used seem to have gone. ...

"While many Americans agree it is bad manners if your cell phone rings during a movie, a Broadway play or a concert, should it be against the law, with offenders paying a $50 fine for each infraction? Politicians in New York City think so, an...

I used to buy telephone cards to use for long-distance calls within the USA. The cards were good for state-to-state calls or in-state cards. The only cards I can find now are for state-to-state calls only. If a person uses one of the state-to-...

anyone else who has tried the new phonesets that have a USB connection to a PC instead of the legacy serial cable?Nortel Meridian 9617 USB phone seems to be the newest two-line deskphone on the block at http://www1.nortelnetworks.com/entprods/p...

Edwards Finance Menu

Ask a Question
About Us / Me
Contact Me
Privacy Policy

Sitemap

My Favorite Sites

PFBlog
Google Finance
Yahoo Finance
Motley Fool
Nveille's Financial Blog
AllFinanceMatters
Free Money Finance
2MillionBlog
The Terror Finance blog

Q&A Subjects